Our Mr. Brooks Dreams of Moderation

It was a quiet afternoon in the Young Fogies Club, and that suited Moral Hazard just fine. The Irish setter owned for photo-op purposes by New York Times columnist David Brooks, Moral Hazard needed a break. He'd spent an entire week trying to avoid all the celebrating occasioned by the apparent rise from the dead of a certain Willard Romney, a great favorite at the Young Fogies Club because he seemed to embody everything that the members of the Young Fogies Club believed themselves to be. Moral Hazard, however, was unimpressed, and not simply because of the stories he'd heard about how Romney had treated Shamus, to whom Moral Hazard was distantly related on his mother's side. That was only personal.

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What bothered Moral Hazard was that Romney seemed to embody almost everything anybody wanted to believe about themselves, as long as they were eligible to vote and in any way likely to vote for him. From his usual place in the pantry, to his well-worn spot on the carpet in the club room, perfectly suited not only to keep an eye on the TV but also to keep an eye on which ankles to gnaw, Moral Hazard had come to the conclusion early on that, had Moral Hazard himself been eligible to vote, Romney would have been in the Young Fogies Club personally, wrestling Moral Hazard for Milk Bones in front of the fire. If dogs could vote, Moral Hazard concluded, Romney would have entered himself at Westminster. If dogs ran free, thought Moral Hazard, quoting Bob Dylan, then why not me?

Moral Hazard sighed, and wandered through the largely empty clubroom toward the front door. In passing, he noticed that a copy of that morning's Times had fallen to the floor near an empty armchair. He nosed it open to the op-ed page. Master had written a column that morning about how Willard Romney embodied almost everything Master wanted to believe about himself. That Romney also happened to be the Republican candidate for president, it was assumed, was the purest accident. Moral Hazard licked his balls in deep contemplation and dozed off. He dreamed of walking into the polling place in the school down the block and picking up a ballot, using the license around his neck as his only ID. He slipped into the booth and voted against Willard Romney and walked out again. Seamus was waiting on the sidewalk. They bumped nuzzles and walked down the street to a bar, where they set each other up to shots of Jameson and pints of Guinness and toasted the end of roof-rack politics in America. Yeah, dreamed Moral Hazard, that'd be cool.

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Over the past month, Mitt Romney has aggressively appealed to moderate voters. President Barack Obama, for some reason, hasn't. But, in what he thought was an off-the-record interview with The Des Moines Register, Obama laid out a pretty moderate agenda for his second term. It occurred to me that this might be a good time to describe what being a moderate means.

Let's ignore the fact that there is absolutely no reason in the world to believe the former appeal, based on what Romney has said and done for going on seven years. Also, too, I am asking — nay, begging; nay, holding a freaking telethon — that you will not do what you said you would do. Ah, dammit. Too late.

First, let me describe what moderation is not. It is not just finding the midpoint between two opposing poles and opportunistically planting yourself there. Only people who know nothing about moderation think it means that.

Also, Republican presidential candidates who want to con Important Columnists whom they know are so gullible that they'd trade their company ID's for a bag of magic beans.

Moderates start with a political vision, but they get it from history books, not philosophy books. That is, a moderate isn't ultimately committed to an abstract idea. Instead, she has a deep reverence for the way people live in her country and the animating principle behind that way of life. In America, moderates revere the fact that we are a nation of immigrants dedicated to the American dream — committed to the idea that each person should be able to work hard and rise. This animating principle doesn't mean that all Americans think alike. It means that we have a tradition of conflict. Over the centuries, we have engaged in a series of long arguments around how to promote the American dream — arguments that pit equality against achievement, centralization against decentralization, order and community against liberty and individualism.

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How, exactly, is "equality" pitted against "achievement"? Or "community" against "liberty"? Doesn't the Constitution say in, like, its opening paragraph that we come together to form a government, which is certainly a "community," in order to safeguard our "liberty." Also, too: the "moderate" is necessarily female? I saw what you did there, Brooksie. Is that like the "sacred feminine" that made Dan Brown rich?

The moderate doesn't try to solve those arguments. There are no ultimate solutions. The moderate tries to preserve the tradition of conflict, keeping the opposing sides balanced. She understands that most public issues involve trade-offs. In most great arguments, there are two partially true points of view, which sit in tension. The moderate tries to maintain a rough proportion between them, to keep her country along its historic trajectory.

Which, of course, is why Willard Romney and the Republican party have sought the center for approximately the past 32 minutes. And, as to the greatest American argument of them all — race and its ultimate manifestation, slavery — I'd say there really weren't two "partially true" points of view.

Americans have prospered over the centuries because we've kept a rough balance between things like individual opportunity and social cohesion, local rights and federal power. At any moment, new historical circumstances, like industrialization or globalization, might upset the balance. But the political system gradually finds a new equilibrium.

The moderate creates her policy agenda by looking to her specific circumstances and seeing which things are being driven out of proportion at the current moment. This idea — that you base your agenda on your specific situation — may seem obvious, but immoderate people often know what their solutions are before they define the problems. For a certain sort of conservative, tax cuts and smaller government are always the answer, no matter what the situation. For a certain sort of liberal, tax increases for the rich and more government programs are always the answer.

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I have noticed that every single member of the Democratic delegation, as well as the president, all have taken a pledge to ACORN that they never will vote for any bill that does not raise taxes on the very wealthy or that fails to create a new government program. No, wait, I've confused this with something else.

The moderate does not believe that there are policies that are permanently right. Situations matter most. Tax cuts might be right one decade but wrong the next. Tighter regulations might be right one decade, but if sclerosis sets in then deregulation might be in order.

The problem with, say, financial regulations is that the need for them varies from decade to decade. That's why we had stability in the financial system from the 1930's until the 1980's. Since then, when we began seriously the business of cleaning out the system's sclerotic regulatory arteries, we've had the S&L collapse, the collapse in long-term capital management, and a financial collapse that nearly ate the world. Policies may not be "permanently right," but "unbridled greed" is a permanent condition.

Just as the founding fathers tried a mixed form of government, moderates like pluralistic agendas, mixing and matching from columns A, B and C. They try to create harmonious blends of policies that don't, at first glance, go together. Being moderate does not mean being tepid. It will likely take some pretty energetic policies to reduce inequality or control debt. The best moderates can smash partisan categories and be hard-charging in two directions simultaneously.

Especially when both political parties are committed to controlling debt, and one of them is committed to maintaining inequality, and doesn't even see it as a problem, and that happens to be the party and the movement you've spent your entire professional life blowing in print.

Moderation is also a distinct ethical disposition. Just as the moderate suspects imbalance in the country, so she suspects it in herself. She distrusts passionate intensity and bold simplicity and admires self-restraint, intellectual openness and equipoise.

She'd also like you and your ideological soulmates to keep your noses out of what she does with her ladyparts. Also, too: Just a minute, boys; she's got the feed-box noise — it says his great-grandfather was...

Therefore, there's a lot of ignorance about what it means to be moderate. If politicians are going to try to pander to the moderate mindset, they should do it right. I hope this column has helped.

I think politicians are very good at pandering to the moderate mindset. I think they could convince David Brooks to chew off his own foot.

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